Instead of a column, I’m going to share some random thoughts. Some of those thoughts relate to COVID-19, some don’t. They’re just things I’ve been thinking about.
Category: Blogs
The official Everything-Voluntary.com blog.
No One Will Tell You
You will not be told the most important truths. Because no one can tell you. You have to discover them yourself from experience.
Freedom of Association
Argument against freedom of association constitutes a rejection of ethics. Politics is what you are left with after you reject ethics. It is the systematic violation of consent. It is an endless fight over oppressive control and stolen resources in which association must be either forced or prohibited.
Government-Supremacist
A government-supremacist is an extreme statist. Not just someone who believes governing others to be a legitimate human endeavor but someone who assumes that political government is superior to and naturally above society and the individuals in a society.
Will We Learn COVID-19’s Most Important Lesson?
On February 29th, US Surgeon General Jerome Adams took to Twitter to admonish Americans: “Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus …” A little over a month later, Adams finally got around to asking the Centers for Disease Control if perhaps he’d been talking through his hat when talking through a mask might have been smarter.
Government-Supremacist Assumptions
You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes with a magnifying glass. Government-supremacists are easy to spot by the bad assumptions they naturally make and wave around in public.
Relative Tragedy
Giving something a name grants magical hypnotic power. “Coronavirus” or “Covid” are names that immediately occupy all attention and short circuit normal brain function.
Cultural Diversity Requires Cultural Homogeneity
The diversity of a city like New York has historically come not from “diversity training” a bunch of diverse people, but by bringing together a bunch of very culturally-distinctive people: Italians, Irish, English, Puerto Ricans, Eastern Europeans, Jews, African-Americans, Germans, Chinese, and so on. None of the real people who created the initial conditions for cultural diversity were themselves hailing from diverse environments.
COVID-19: Resist Much, Obey Little, and Never Forget
The COVID-19 outbreak isn’t over yet, but we’ve reached a turning point: American politicians and bureaucrats are beginning the tricky process of trying to simultaneously walk back their predictions of catastrophe, while awarding themselves the credit for those predictions not coming true, and avoiding the blame they deserve for inciting headlong irrational panic.
Are Kids Learning More at Home During COVID-19?
More than one billion students around the world are currently missing school due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Several US states have already canceled school for the remainder of the academic year, turning to online learning when possible, and other states are likely to extend their school closures soon. Some educationists panic about learning loss while children are at home with their families, and headlines abound about how “homeschooling during the coronavirus will set back a generation of children.”